Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman

[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #34, Aug. 19,
1966, pp. 12-13. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]

COMRADE Mao Tse-tung presided in person over the
Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of
China, which was held in a new stage of China’s socialist revolution and at a
decisive moment in the development of the great proletarian cultural revolution.
This Session is a milestone marking the new stage of our country’s socialist
revolution.

In socialist countries, there still exists the
question of which road will be taken after the basic completion of the socialist
transformation of the ownership of the means of production. The question of whether
to carry the socialist revolution through to the end and make the gradual transition
to communism, or to stop half-way and retrogress towards capitalism, presents itself
sharply before the people. By summing up and drawing upon both the positive and the
negative experiences of the Chinese revolution and the international communist
movement, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has furnished the theoretical answer to this
question; and the question is gradually being resolved in practice.

At the Tenth Plenary Session of the Eighth
Central Committee of the Party, which was held in 1962, Comrade Mao Tse-tung once
again stressed the theory of contradictions, of classes and class struggle in
socialist society and gave us the great call never to forget class struggle.
Furthermore, during the past few years, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has put forward a
series of brilliant policies which are of decisive and fundamental importance to
socialist revolution and socialist construction; a series of important directives
with regard to the socialist education movement and the great proletarian cultural
revolution; and a series of important guiding principles on opposition to
imperialism, on the establishment of the broadest possible international united
front against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys, on opposition to modern revisionism,
and on support for the revolutionary struggles of all the oppressed peoples and
oppressed nations of the world. All these are fundamental questions for
consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat and the socialist system in our
country, for preventing revisionist usurpation of the Party and state leadership,
for preventing the restoration of capitalism and for ensuring that China adheres
to proletarian internationalism.

Sailing the seas depends on the helmsman!

The great helmsman of our country’s revolution
is Comrade Mao Tse-tung.

It is precisely because our Party and the masses
of the people have at the helm a helmsman of such genius as Comrade Mao Tse-tung
and the great thought of Mao Tse-tung as the compass, to chart the correct course
through heavy fog that, during the past few decades, at each important moment of
our country’s revolution, the great ship of our revolution has been able to avoid
the countless dangerous shoals and hidden rocks and advance victoriously along the
revolutionary course of Marxism-Leninism in the teeth of great storms and waves.

Lenin said: “Without a revolutionary theory
there can be no revolutionary movement.” This is perfectly true. Without Mao
Tse-tung’s thought, there would never have been the great, glorious and correct
Communist Party of China, or the victory of our democratic revolution and socialist
revolution, or the new China. Without Mao Tse-tung’s thought, it would have been
impossible to build China into a great socialist country or to enable the Chinese
people to stand for ever erect in the world and to march forward constantly.

Comrade Lin Piao has very correctly explained
the supreme importance of Mao Tse-tung’s thought for the Chinese revolution and
for the future of China. He said: “China is a great socialist state of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and has a population of 700 million. It needs
unified thinking, revolutionary thinking, correct thinking. That is Mao Tse-tung’s
thinking.”

The fundamental task of the great proletarian
cultural revolution in China is to ensure that Mao Tse-tung’s thought shall be
grasped by the greatest possible number of people. It is also to further promote
the revolutionization of people’s ideology and turn the spiritual force into a
gigantic material force for the transformation of society and nature.

Let us hold still higher the great red banner of
Mao Tse-tung’s thought, rally even more closely round the Party’s Central Committee
headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, carry out energetically the policies set down in
the Communique of the Eleventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of
the Party, unite with all those with whom it is possible to unite, and, relying on
our own strength and working vigorously, overcome all resistance and all
difficulties and carry through the great proletarian cultural revolution, the
socialist revolution and the struggle against imperialism and modern revisionism
to the very end.

Strive to build China into a powerful socialist
country!

Strive to unite with the people of all countries
to build a new world without imperialism, without capitalism and without the system
of exploitation of man by man!